A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick

Jonathan Swift

Inspired by Dr Swift I would like to put forward this modest proposal to help solve both our overclouding of our prisons and our devastating governmental budget deficit.  Consider, if you will, allowing anyone who kills, comets any form of unlawful homicide, to pay to the local, state, and federal government a fine equivalent to the expected taxes to be paid by the person(s) killed.  The benefits to the fiances of the government are immediately obvious to everyone.

The state would not only have a new, non-tax, form of revenue but also the state would no-longer have the expense of incarceration.  To make things even better we could make the alternate penalty, in lieu of cash remuneration to the state, the person convicted would be to be put to death as soon as possible,  to the date of conviction.  If upon conviction the person(s) in question now wishes to pay the state then all of the state’s expenses will be included.  This has the additional benefit of encourage the early, pre-trial, agreement to paying of the state the loss of tax revenue of the decedent(s).

It should be obvious to all that this system has the advantage of discouraging the negligent killing of the most productive members of society by making it prohibitively expensive.  Even more benefit to the government revenues by calculating the fee based upon both the taxes payed in the form of income, investment, and capital gains but also taxes such as sales and property taxes.  We could even include utility taxes just to make things fair.

People in ‘Stand Your Ground’ jurisdiction would be motivated not to act rashly as you would still be held liable for the death of another.  Police would be encourage not to use deadly force.  Doctors, Nurses, EMTs will be fully motivated to act so that the patient does not die.  Also they would be no question of ‘pulling the plug’ on someone as the person or persons would then be easily shown to be responsible for the death.

Another benefit is the creation of a new insurance industry, we would have ‘Death’ insurance to join ‘Life’ insurance.  In the case of ‘Death’ insurance, the buyer would be insured against being held responsible for the death of another.  As this would normally be a very rare occurrence the companies providing the policy would have a very nice profit margin.

The final benefit is society would now have an objective measure of the worth of each member.  No longer would there be any question of an individuals worth.  The worth of everyone would be know, in point of fact it would be in the governments best interest calculate everyone’s worth on a regular basses and for individuals to insure that this valuation is as high as possible.  People worth more would be encouraged to dress in a distinctive way manner that would not be simply or easily copied or imitated by those worth less.  New business would spring up to provide this service to the worthy stimulating the economy and providing gainful employment.

As has been shown here this proposal is a ‘win’ ‘win’ for all.